Harmony Ch. 03

(Thanks to those of you who have read and commented and hopefully enjoyed so far. I have to confess to a continuity error; there was something in the first chapter about a university literary magazine that can be disregarded. I mixed up my drafts. I graciously beg your apology and ask that you erase that from your memory as we go back a little bit in this chapter.)

Calvin was twenty-three years old, in the second year of his master's degree, and, if not entirely happy, he was secure in his purpose. He believed in his own abilities and intelligence, and life as yet had not sent him any serious reasons to doubt either. He had the assured disposition of a person doing exactly what he wanted to do, and the stubbornness of any believer wholeheartedly committed to a cause--in this case, his own ambition. He sometimes infuriated people because of that, sometimes also invited ire just for his particular combination of talent and privilege. But he was kind, enthusiastic about what interested him, generous as a teacher, and woefully bad at lying or hiding his opinions.

What had been hardest about his life up to then had been loneliness. Sometimes he reproached himself for living such a monkish existence during what were supposed to be the best years of his life, in a city full of young people his age carousing at bars and sporting events and concerts every night. He had acquaintances, colleagues, but no one he was truly close to. With women he simply hadn't had the luck. Or at least he told himself that's what it was. After all, he wasn't bad-looking; he was tall and built broad, with a thatch of sandy hair. He did wear glasses, and he probably didn't shave as often as he should have, but he never figured it really mattered. He'd been interested in a few people, and a few people had been interested in him, but they weren't the same ones, unfortunately. Timing and fate simply hadn't matched him up with anyone yet. Though he was beginning to wonder why it had to take so long.

That was one amusing piece of luck: that when he met Ginny, he wasn't searching for a date. He was searching for a text.

If Calvin did have one person who could be considered a close friend, the title would probably fall on his office mate, Assif. It was Assif who dragged him to the bookstore in Cambridge back in August. The shop was practically in a back alley, one of the tiny winding streets that served as a horse path when redcoats were still running around the north bank of the Charles. When Cal peered through the plate-glass window he saw that the place only had room for four rows of folding chairs. There might have been room for another near the front, but a large chunk of the floor near the cash register was taken up by what appeared to be a snoozing wolf.

"This is the worst idea you've ever had," he told Assif.

"No, no, no. Sharing an office with you was the worst idea I ever had." Assif smiled, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. He continued, in the peculiar cadence that endeared him to Calvin, "This is nothing. This will not fill my days with the melodies of your personal discontent."

"We'll see about that."

They pushed in through the small blue door, one at a time, Assif lingering behind him as if he expected Cal to turn around and bolt. Above them a string of bells tinkled in a shimmer of F-sharps, slightly high to Calvin's perfectly-pitched ear. In such a small space, the group of maybe a dozen and a half people really felt like a crowd. A smattering of people who seemed to fit in no particular category were in the store: art student types, a young man with dreadlocks, an elderly couple in identical brown rain coats, and an attractive girl with a mane of the brightest unnaturally red hair he'd ever seen.

He and Assif took seats in the row farthest from the small podium next to the slumbering beast. The proprietor, a middle-aged woman with short graying hair and clunky metal jewelry who reminded Cal of his mother, clapped her hands. "Welcome," she said. There was no further preamble; the young man with dreadlocks rose with a notebook and began reading his poetry. Three words in, Cal knew that whatever he was looking for, this wasn't it.

Just what "it" was that he was looking for had no clear definition. That was part of the problem. All summer he'd been poring through books of all shapes and sizes. He was starting to run out of time if he wanted a completed, symphony-length piece for his master's thesis. Thankfully, his advisor, Katzoulas, an eighty-two year old Professor Emeritus and the only faculty member who would work with Calvin, didn't insist on deadlines. People said Katzoulas was half-senile anyway. Calvin didn't think so - he thought Katzoulas was brilliant, but then, Calvin was aware that some people thought he was also half-senile. He didn't particularly care. He was too busy looking for a text.

"Just pick something!" Assif would fume at him, dismayed to step into their shared office, a room the size of a walk-in closet, and find each day yet more books, as if the tomes were mating like rabbits in the night. "You have the wealth of world literature in your hands and none of it's good enough."

"It's good--well, some of it. It's just not right."

"And what is right, hmm? What does that mean, right?"

How could he explain? It wasn't as if there were a checklist. It had to have a rhythm, an internal logic, a spareness that he could work with. A spark. A language all its own that could communicate in tandem with his own. "I'll know it when I read it."

But he had, at that point, read an awful lot. There was more poetry in the world than he'd imagined. And he'd read so much of it, even some absolute doggerel. Then Assif had seized on an idea that would at least get the books out of his way.

"What about poetry that hasn't been published yet?"

"If it hasn't been published, it probably isn't any good."

"Oh? Because your work has been published, yes? Remind me, Calvin - are you in the Kalmus catalog, or is it Schurmer?"

The appeal to his ego was a good one, a sharp blow that he had to respect. "Fine, then. Find me some unpublished poetry and I'll take a look."

"Rather a listen, I should think."

So there they were, crammed into a small bookstore with a struggling air-conditioner while the elderly woman in the raincoat read tightly rhymed lines about gardening with her grandchildren. The woman took her seat to the same polite applause that had greeted everyone else, and Assif patted Cal on the shoulder before disappearing out the tinkling door for a cigarette while the girl with unnatural hair rose from her chair.

She introduced herself as a student at Calvin's university. "I only have one tonight," she said, her voice clear and a little cold. She had a few neatly folded pages in her hand and she read from them with a soft and nuanced inflection. The way her voice shaped the words was almost painful. It made Calvin sink back down into his seat. And then the words washed over him. There were patterns, it seemed like she had rules, but he didn't quite know what they were. There were a few lines in crisp German, later a few in languid French. He didn't need to know what every word meant; it was the rhythm, the cadence, that drew him in. Nominally the poem was about a dead child; but like many poems, it touched worlds.

The applause seemed more tepid, more perfunctory; Calvin saw the elderly couple frowning as if it were a bad note to end on. He supposed that child mortality would be a hard act to follow a lilting paean to the pleasures of grandchildren, and for a moment admired the young woman all the more for not hesitating, not saying a word to mitigate the discomfort.

As people started to rise and fill the awkward silence with their small talk and shuffling, he extended his long legs to step over two rows of chairs. She was looking down, putting the folded pages into her small black leather bag, and when he said, "Can I have a look at that?" she glanced up in surprise.

"Please," he amended. "I'd like to see it."

"I guess." Her voice was wary, but she handed it over. He scanned the line breaks. He heard her voice in his head as he read it, influencing his own. Somewhere far off in his mind he heard the faintest glimmers of something--something new, but that had been there all along, waiting.

"Is this a fair representation of your work in general?"

"Yes. Why?" She looked suspicious. "Are you a literary agent or something?"

"No, I--." He paused. He hadn't thought about the difficulties of talking to a living poet instead of taking the words of a dead one. "I want to set this."

"Set it?"

"To music. This one, and maybe some other ones, if you'll write them with me."

She looked at him as if he had just proposed they set fire to the building. "Are you serious? This isn't just a come-on to get my phone number is it?"

"No! Nothing like that. I'm a composer. I really am, my friend can vouch for me--" he turned to look for Assif but didn't see him in the vicinity. "Well, he could if I could find him. I've been looking a long time for something I can work with, and I can't write my own text, my mind just doesn't work that way, I can't write words, but I can set them. I can set this." He was annoyed with himself for sounding so breathless. It was putting her off, he could tell.

"I don't even know your name."

"Calvin Jansen," he said, extending his hand. "Now you do."

She didn't take it, was instead looking him up and down. "Look, ah--Calvin, I don't mean to offend you, but I don't play well with others."

He was losing her. He looked down at the paper in his hand and knew that he could not let this go. "Let me show you what I can do with this. Please. I promise you won't regret it. And what do you have to lose?"

The look on her face was a variation of what Calvin saw often from people--some aggregate of disbelief, exasperation, and just enough fondness--or restraint--to keep it all in check. Finally she looked heavenward, shook her head, and said, as if resigning herself to some uncertain future: "Okay, then." She stuck out a hand. "Virginia Abbott. Call me Ginny."

***

What he thought of often, now, was how easy it would have been to miss her. If Assif hadn't found that particular bookstore, that particular evening...if she had decided not to go (she told him it was only the second time she'd been to that reading series), or not to read...he would never have known her. That thought was impossible to hold in his head when he woke up with her in his bed, her hair in a heap across the pillow and her face soft with sleep. When she turned and curled herself into him, her head on his chest, Calvin felt as if he had been waiting for her his whole life.

Being with her was wonderful. There were very few people Calvin felt truly comfortable with, but with Ginny he was completely at ease. She listened to him, took him seriously. She was the most naturally curious person he'd ever met. The aloofness, the coldness of their first meeting had thawed completely, and now she was playful and talkative. Everything interested her--her mind was rapacious, her gift for language astonished him. He wouldn't have thought he could be with a woman who wasn't a musician, but he had realized very early on that Ginny knew enough to keep up with anything he talked about. Sometimes he thought she was indulging him, when he was talking about Schoenberg or Mahler and he saw a smile creep into the corners of her lips. But it was nice to be indulged; it was a rare enough occurrence.

She was clever, she was witty, she was thoughtful. She would do the smallest things that he found adorable, like her habit of crinkling her nose in self-deprecation, which made him want to fold her up in his arms and kiss her. And then there was the fact that he could kiss her, could do much more than that. Her body was the tangible part of everything he adored, and he could hardly refrain from touching her if she was within arm's reach of him. Calvin had always thought that having sex was supposed to satisfy the desire for it, but in his case the desire was always growing. With Ginny, all he wanted, always, was more.

And yet--

And yet, as wonderful as things were, he couldn't deny that Ginny could still be frustratingly opaque. He wanted to know as much about her as she seemed to want to know about him, but she kept up walls she wouldn't let him pass through. There were subjects she never broached, topics she evaded, questions she wouldn't answer. She could skillfully change the subject if she didn't like the direction of a conversation; sometimes he didn't realize she had done it until long after, remembering their time together and realizing she'd never answered his questions. His conversations with her ranged far and wide, but, on her part, never too close to home. After two weeks, he knew a great deal about her--for instance, which spot on her neck would make her shiver when he kissed it--and yet hardly anything; he still didn't know the name of her hometown, or what her parents did for a living.

Sometimes he wondered how much it mattered, when they fit together so well, minds and bodies. Their couplings were intense enough to continually surprise him. One afternoon when they both had a spare hour she met him at his apartment. Ostensibly they were going to go to lunch. When he opened the door wearing his coat, she had reached for his hand and brought it to her face. She put the knuckle of his index finger in her mouth, holding it there for a moment, giving him a very significant look before she released it.

"I want to stay in," she said.

They'd undressed each other messily, leaving clothing wherever it fell. Ginny pushed him back onto the couch until he was prone, laughing a little at her aggression. She took him all in one motion, an incredible sensation, throwing her head back and then looking back down at him, her face fixed on his. She began to move, slowly at first but then with more speed; she ran her fingernails down his chest. She came quickly, bending forward to howl his name into his neck. He was close but then she slowed, stopped, and he did not complain.

"Just a minute," she panted, and he smoothed her hair. He could feel her aftershocks, erratic, exquisite little pulses around his cock. She rolled her hips just a tiny bit, shuddering. She did it again. Again. Her breath still hot on his neck. Another little circling of her hips.

"Tell me what you're doing," he murmured.

"You just feel so good like this."

"Then don't stop."

He let her find her rhythm, and when she had it he flexed his own hips, deeper into her. She gasped and they both stopped moving for a moment, were completely still. He gripped her waist, anchoring her. She began again, a little more motion this time, and again he thrust upwards at the height of it; one more time and she bit his shoulder, hard, as if for purchase. The sharp little sting of pain mixed with the pleasure of her clenching tight around him again and that was all it took.

She clung to him long after, still breathing heavily, though she had barely been moving. Carefully he shifted underneath her.

"You didn't come," she said weakly.

"I assure you I did," he chuckled. "You were a little distracted."

"Oh." Her voice sounded liquid. They lay there in no hurry to move, Cal's mind drifting quietly, humming music in his head, tracing the line of her spine with his fingers. Gradually he became aware that the pattern of her breathing had changed; then he realized that she was crying.

"Ginny? Did I hurt you?"

"No, of course not." She lifted her head now, wiping her eyes.

"What is it?"

"Nothing, I swear, it's--hormones, or something, I don't know. I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry. It's fine. I just want you to be okay."

That just made her cry harder. "Oh, you must think I'm crazy," she managed.

"No, no, no." He wrapped his arms around her and held her. As strange as it was, he was touched by the experience; except for his sister, years ago when she was very young, he had never comforted anyone before. When she finally stopped crying she thanked him.

He kissed her forehead. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm wonderful."

But she gathered her clothes quickly after that. After she left, the euphoria of the sex faded a little and he was left with the disquieting sense of the enormity of what she wasn't telling him; of all that he still did not know about her. He thought again of his first sight of her, that first sound of her low, cool voice. In some ways she was still that stranger--lovely but entirely remote.

***

If he kept thinking about the serendipitous way they'd met, Ginny could not stop thinking about the night she began to really know him.

For over a week after meeting the raving boy in the bookstore who'd insisted on writing her phone number meticulously his arm before his friend, taking pity, brought him a scrap of paper from near the cash register, she had heard nothing from him. Then, out of the blue on a Wednesday, she'd come from her history class to find a voicemail:

"Ginny, it's done! Wait, I'm sorry--this is Calvin Jansen, Calvin from the bookstore. I have your poem. I mean, I've set your poem. Come hear it tomorrow night--it has to be tomorrow night, it's the only time I could get the soprano to help me out--at 7:00 in the basement of the music building. You know where that is? If you don't, call me. I'll see you then, ok? Please come."

The whole walk there, she questioned why she was even doing it. She had never wanted someone to set her poetry to music. She hadn't even thought of it as a possibility. And she was so afraid of sharing her work that she had only made the most recent, tentative forays into reading; the bookstore's series had seemed relatively low-pressure, an acceptable environment to fail in. Calvin's intense interest had unsettled her.

She hadn't ever been in the music building before; though it looked nice from the outside, ivy-covered and regal, inside it was decrepit, cavernous and dim. She was several minutes late after getting lost in the warren of basement corridors.

Seeing him again, she had the impression of a loaded spring, of intensely focused energy. She tried to apologize for her lateness but he waved her away to sit at one of the desks in the room. Beside the piano stood a smug-looking blonde, presumably a singer. Had he paid her? She wondered how long this would take. Calvin sat at the piano, posture straight and arms relaxed, his gaze fixed on the staff paper in front of hem. He glanced at the singer and Ginny wondered idly if they'd ever slept together.

Then, at some point in the next ten minutes, she stopped wondering about anything and everything. It was like she moved beyond her imagination and crossed into territory entirely foreign to her. The words were both hers and no longer hers at all; familiar, but transformed. It was as if he had reached his hand into her mind. How could he do that with such spare music? By the time the soprano's haunting last line ended and Calvin's fingers played the final gentle chord, she might as well have been on another planet. Possibility of a kind she'd never considered was everywhere, vibrating in the very air. She knew she'd work with him; if he suddenly changed his mind, she would pursue him just as ardently as he'd been after her.

Calvin thanked the singer, who left without a word--no, Ginny thought, they hadn't slept together, he was far too genuine a person for a snob like that--and then turned to look at Ginny. He had a shit-eating grin on his face. Dammit, she thought, not only is he right, he knows he's right. But it hardly mattered.

Still, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of massaging his ego too much. "Saturday," she said flatly. "I have some time on Saturday evening."